Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Future Drought Fund Bill 2018 and the Future Drought Fund (Consequential Amendments) Bill 2018. At the commencement of this year, 58.1 per cent of the land area of Queensland was drought-declared. That's about one million square kilometres, or about the size of France, Germany and the United Kingdom combined. That is 23 councils and five part-council areas drought-declared. This is devastating for regional Queensland. Some of these communities have faced their seventh consecutive year of drought.

I'm from western Queensland—not far western Queensland—from the town of St George on the Balonne River. I've seen what drought looks like, how it affects country towns and how it can be a drain on communities. I know that there are people out there doing it tough. Some of my friends still work on farms and have been doing it tough for a long time now, but their resilience is an inspiration. We need to support drought-affected farmers in Queensland, and obviously right across Australia, and we need to support their communities.

Labor has always supported farmers. I don't just mean in the rollout of needs based education funding, which particularly benefits the bush, or Medicare, which obviously particularly benefits the bush as well, or the NBN, which is a great leap forward for bush communities. In fact, I would suggest those three policies have done more for the bush than the National Party has ever done in the history of Federation, with all respect to my colleagues from the National Party.

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